| Abstract |
Health care institutions, when faced with an imperative to cut costs, have targeted labor costs, particularly those associated with the nursing staff. In the absence of any meaningful data relating nursing care with positive patient outcomes, health care institutions are likely to translate additional reductions in budgets into nursing staff cuts. Because nurses are an integral part of the health care delivery system, both in terms of patient contact and hospital spending, the American Nurses Association (ANA) has initiated the development of a nursing report card. This report card includes indicators chosen for their ability to link the quality of nursing care to patient outcomes. The links between patient outcomes and nursing care are not well understood. Before these relationships can be tested, more information is needed about the feasibility of collecting both nursing care data and patient outcome data. The specific aims of this pilot study were to demonstrate that (1) nursing care quality data can be collected, (2) ANA nursing quality indicator data can be collected from a military facility, and (3) ANA nursing quality indicator values are correlated with nursing care quality scores. This feasibility pilot study used existing data. The sample included the records of 872 adult inpatients from two adult intensive care units, one step-down unit, one medical unit, and one surgical unit, collected over a three-month period. A total of 5,082 patient records were reviewed. The nursing sample included 73 RNs, LPNs, and unlicensed staff from the same inpatient units. |
